Inside the Phillies with MLB.com beat writer Todd Zolecki

Continued Continued Success?

Who will wish the Phillies “continued success” when they win this season?

The Phillies made an addition to their broadcast team this year, bringing aboard Gregg Murphy as their field reporter. He will be handling postgame interviews, a role Gary Matthews held the past few seasons.

Unless you’ve been under a rock — or don’t get Phillies broadcasts (in that case, my sincere apologies) — Matthews ended every interview by wishing the player, “Continued success.” Matthews said he can’t pinpoint how, why or when he started wishing players continued success, but he soon realized it caught on. He got letters and e-mails and had random fans stopping him and wishing him “continued success.”

“I got to where I really started to enjoy it and look forward to it,” Matthews said of the postgame interviews. “But I’m for whatever makes the broadcast better. It’s cool. I’ll still do my pregame stuff on the radio and broadcast on TV.”

Matthews is aware of “Continued Success” t-shirts for sale.

“I don’t have one, but I’m going to get one,” he said. “And hopefully with Murph, ‘Continued success.’”

Murphy said he has answered hundreds of questions about how he plans to handle postgame interviews.

“I do plan on paying homage to him, but probably not until Opening Day,” Murphy sad. “Definitely a tip of the cap to him.”

Or a tip of the fedora, as fellow broadcaster Scott Franzke correctly pointed out.

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Jim Salisbury and I co-authored the book The Rotation, which is now available. Check it out here!

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9 Comments

“Continued success” is the ONLY thing I’ll miss about Sarge’s post-game interviews. I think Murph will bring a little more life to the chats. He has much more personality, than Sarge. I thought he did great with his field reporting, yesterday!

The implication of the headline here is that the Sarge is gone. My heart was all aflutter. But ,no, this is not to be. In typical Phillies fashion, Sarge is being moved from his strength so he can concentrate on his weakness. This just has Junior’s fingerprints all over it.

I see I’m not alone in thinking adding Murph was a step in the WRONG direction. So now we must endure the 3 original booth stooges, plus Murph…you know, Mr. ‘we’ll take a short break.’ Yet he NEVER informs me when a looong break is to come. What school of broadcasting did these dolts attend? Perhaps they get paid by the word…is that why Wheels never shuts up? Oh how I long for Harry and Whitey. Or By (Saam) and Bill (Campbell.)

You’re missing a lot by not being able to watch the games. You’re actually lucky if you cannot hear the 3 TV booth stooges yammer constantly, incessantly. TV is by nature a visual media. Yet they treat it as if they’re doing radio and we cannot SEE what’s happening.

I have a high hope that somehow they could be transformed into the very best broadcasting team in the business…J.J, Keith (or Bill), and Coatesy.

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They are really convincing and will definitely work.
Still, the posts are very brief for newbies.
Could you please extend them a bit from next
time? Thanks for the post.

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